U.S. Panel Drops Point Mugu Base From Closure List : Military: Admitting it erred in targeting Navy installation, the commission praises operations there. A Sacramento site is among the facilities set to shut.

After weeks of scrutinizing the nation’s military installations for shutdown, federal base-closure commissioners on Thursday spared the Point Mugu naval base and even admitted “we goofed” in targeting the Ventura County installation for closure.

But McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento and more than two dozen other bases were not as fortunate, as the commissioners began several days of deliberations on the fate of 181 bases that may no longer be affordable in the post-Cold War era.

In a best-case scenario for Point Mugu supporters, the Base Closure and Realignment Commission singled out the base for praise as it voted 8 to 0 to remove the facility from the list of endangered installations. Commissioners also strongly criticized the Pentagon inspector general’s report that inspired them to put Point Mugu on the hit list of military bases in the first place.

“We goofed,” commission Chairman Alan Dixon said. “It’s off.”

The commissioners determined that the reduction in overhead costs and personnel would be minimal if most of Point Mugu’s operations were moved to its sister base at China Lake, 160 miles away in the Mojave Desert.

Just before the critical vote, the two commissioners who visited Point Mugu last month heaped praised on the facility, which has a 9,000-member work force that mostly tests weapons fired by naval aircraft.

“We went there because it was under a cloud,” said Commissioner Benjamin F. Montoya, who toured the Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center on May 30 with fellow Commissioner Rebecca Cox. “We found military value, an outstanding facility . . . truly a national asset.”

News of the unanimous support swept across the base a few miles down Pacific Coast Highway from Oxnard. Commanding officer Adm. Dana B. McKinney dispatched an e-mail message to “All Hands” at the high-tech weapons test center.

“In the immortal words of ‘The Great One’ (Jackie Gleason for all you generation-x folks), ‘How Sweet it is!!!’ ” McKinney’s message began.

Point Mugu’s good fortune came during an otherwise tough day for California, a state that has absorbed 70% of the jobs eliminated in the three previous rounds of base closings.

Earlier Thursday, the commission decided to shut down McClellan Air Force Base, wiping out 14,000 civilian and military jobs. The vote prompted a stone-faced Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to leave the room, vowing to challenge the commission’s decisions with President Clinton.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and a congressman from Sacramento immediately joined Feinstein, calling on President Clinton to reject the commission’s findings, as he is allowed under the base closing law.

“Mr. President, you now hold the power to correct this gross mistake,” Boxer wrote in a letter to the White House.

The commission must send its recommendations to Clinton by July 1. He has two weeks to approve them and forward them to Congress unchanged--or return to the commission with his reasons for disapproval.

Once the recommendations land on Capitol Hill, Congress must vote the entire list up or down, without adding or removing bases. If Congress does not vote within 45 days, the recommendations automatically go into effect.

White House spokesman Mike McCurry said Clinton will consider stepping in if the Defense Department makes a potent case against closing the Air Force repair depots at McClellan and Kelley Air Force Base in San Antonio, another installation ordered closed by the commissioners.

“President Clinton is concerned about some of the decisions of the base closing commission,” McCurry said. “He is going to study the action taken by the commission very closely with [Defense] Secretary [William J.] Perry. He will be very interested in what Secretary Perry says about how those decisions affect our national security, our force posture and our readiness.”

He said Clinton will make no decision while the commission is still meeting but will ask for Perry’s recommendation after the panel is done. “There will be a serious review,” he said.

Some Pentagon officials were also angry and surprised.

“Certainly, there is disappointment,” a senior Pentagon official said Thursday. “But I believe that the secretary feels he wants to wait until the package is on his desk in toto . It would be premature to say anything until everything is in place.”

In previous rounds, the commission’s recommendations have quickly been accepted by the White House and Congress.

Even if Clinton were to intervene, the comments of the commissioners and Pentagon officials indicate there would be little or no interest in reconsidering Point Mugu.

The fate of Point Mugu, the county’s largest employer, has been a roller-coaster ride for the task force of elected officials, business leaders and others fighting to keep the base alive. The base pumps an estimated $1 billion into the local economy and the closure would have been a brutal blow to the county.

After initial concern about Point Mugu’s fate last fall, both Navy and Pentagon officials recommended that the base be spared because of its high military value. Relief set in.

But months later, the commission itself voted to reconsider the base, adding it to the endangered list and raising concerns anew.

In the end, the decision on Point Mugu boiled down to dollars and cents, with the commission acknowledging the facility’s unique geography to operate a missile testing range over the Pacific Ocean and its symbiotic relationship with China Lake.

“I think the people out there ought to be commended for what they’re doing and the efficiency and capability that they have developed,” Commissioner Cox said during the brief discussion.

It was Commissioner Montoya who insisted Thursday that Point Mugu be removed from the recommended list of closures, six weeks after he made the motion to add the base to the list.

A retired admiral who spent the early 1960s stationed at the nearby Port Hueneme naval base, Montoya called for a special vote to clear Point Mugu’s name even though the panel could have accomplished the same thing by skipping over Point Mugu and going on to the next base.

“We put it on for a good reason. We were able to nail down that IG’s report,” Montoya said. “I put it on to begin with and I’m delighted to take it off.”

The commission staff recommended maintaining Point Mugu after rejecting the controversial inspector general’s report, which said the Navy could eliminate overlapping programs and save $1.7 billion over the next 20 years by moving most of Point Mugu’s functions to China Lake.

“It was a case of an obsolete report,” said commission staff member Jim Owsley. “Many of the things they observed were true at one point in time but were overtaken by events such as the consolidation. . . . I think we were chasing something that was out of date.”

Owsley said the staff’s own analysis showed that the high cost of moving Point Mugu negated any significant savings.

“We basically made a mistake,” said Commissioner J.B. Davis, a retired Air Force general. “Point Mugu is such a national resource that there’s no way we could tear it down.”

Those arguments were the same ones community leaders have been making for months during an intense lobbying campaign that involved local governments, business leaders, a Washington lobbyist and Reps. Elton Gallegly (R-Simi Valley) and Anthony C. Beilenson (D-Woodland Hills).

“If we had written the script, this is how we would have written it,” said a jubilant Cal Carrera, co-chairman of the county’s BRAC ’95 Task Force, outside the Capitol Hill hearing room.

The panel’s public rejection of the Pentagon report could be critical if Point Mugu ever finds itself threatened during a future base-closure round. Congress will ultimately decide if the military infrastructure needs to be trimmed further, although the Pentagon and the base closure commission are both recommending one more round in coming years.

Feinstein, although angered by the decision against McClellan, issued a statement saying she was pleased with the commission’s vote on Point Mugu.

“I am particularly happy about today’s vote because it reaffirms my belief that the Pentagon Inspector General report--which the commission originally used to put Point Mugu on the list--was flawed,” Feinstein said. “Point Mugu is a national asset, truly a unique, one-of-a-kind installation. The vote was unanimous, as it should have been.”

Besides sparing Point Mugu, the commission voted to close the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Louisville, Ky., which could eventually bring jobs to its sister organization at the naval base in Port Hueneme. The exact number of jobs is not certain because the commission supported a proposal by Louisville officials to privatize some of the base’s functions. But if that does not materialize, Port Hueneme could benefit.

Another threatened base that the commission has not yet taken up, the Naval Warfare Assessment Division at Corona, could also bring jobs to Port Hueneme.

With the county’s bases now secure, local officials were already gearing up for the next step: Trying to secure jobs from bases that were not as lucky.

“We will be aggressively looking at bringing facilities to Mugu to expand,” Gallegly said. “We will be promoting Mugu for military work that can no longer be performed at other bases.”

County Supervisor John K. Flynn, who flew to Washington to attend the commission meeting, said Thursday’s decision alone will help Ventura County’s economy.

“Our confidence was down,” Flynn said. “Home sales were down. I think that’s going to change.”

Defense contractors were relieved that Point Mugu will remain open for the foreseeable future.

“I’ve got 50 people who work at Point Mugu, either directly on the base or for people on base,” said Bob Conroy, an executive in charge of SRS Technologies’ operations in Camarillo. “Those people are very appreciative of the positions they hold.”

Ed Barrineau, an executive with VSE Corp., said the base’s closure could have cost his Alexandria, Va.-based company about 150 employees. “It would have been devastating to a lot of smaller companies that do not have the cushion of other work.”

Both Conroy and Barrineau joined dozens of other members of the local lobbying task force in volunteering time and expertise to mount a defense for Point Mugu. The task force raised nearly $300,000 that allowed them to set up an office and hire two part-time staff members and a top-flight lobbyist in Washington.

“We ought to give credit all the way around on this one,” Conroy said, mentioning Supervisors Flynn and Maggie Kildee and an assortment of business leaders. “A lot of people came through for us and the cities and county gave us money so we could hire [lobbyist] Lynn Jacquez, who was our team leader and worth her weight in gold.”

In his message to base employees, Adm. McKinney said he too was pleased to work with Ventura County supporters and political representatives.

Times staff writer James Bornemeier contributed to this story.

* BASE CELEBRATES: Point Mugu personnel are overjoyed by the good news. B1